Internet Rudeness Basic Lack Of Manners

Are people more rude on the Internet than they are in real life? By rude, I don’t mean men harassing women in chatrooms in ways that amount to virtual rape, or white supremacists spewing to the world their mad ravings about black inferiority.

What I do mean is more ordinary, more commonplace, the cyberspace equivalent of someone cutting in front of you in a grocery store line, or leaning on the horn because you didn’t notice the light had changed.

Things such as this happen all the time: Someone posts a message in an electronic discussion group devoted to computing, and refers to the Intel 8088 computer chip when he means the 8086. Posts follow calling that person “brain-dead” and worse, even though the mistake involves substituting one number for another and could easily have been a slip of the fingers on the keyboard.

In that same group, Macintosh and PC users wage a (mostly) friendly war, though from time to time the PC users ridicule the Mac users for their allegiance to a toy, while Mac users question PC users’ sanity for pledging their fortunes to such a temperamental computer.

Elsewhere, in a group devoted to more serious topics, such as human rights and racism, one member quickly tires of another’s posts. Instead of responding to the content of those posts, he begins disparaging their author.

In one message he characterizes his nemesis as “a dull-witted, humorless boor.” In another he dismisses an objection as “the only weapon left to the dumb and dumber - whining.” People I’ve talked to who have been hanging out longer in cyberspace than I have are divided about whether we’re actually ruder to each other there than we are in real-world interactions.

One friend says he thinks people aren’t really any more rude; it just seems that way because they’re more direct, more forthright, which is often interpreted as insensitivity.

Another person says she thinks rudeness on the Internet occurs about as often, and to the same degree, as rudeness everywhere else. And, she says, you can’t separate rudeness on-line from the general lack of manners throughout American society.